“Thinking about swimming isn’t much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away.”

When you start using senses you’ve neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes.

Originality is genius. If you respect and care for it, it will take you on the ride of your life.

What you want is what you need. Your dearest wish comes straight from your core, loaded with vital information about who you are and who you can become.

Isolation is the dream killer.

Each destination you reach only opens out into wider horizons, new and undiscovered countries for you to explore.

Irreverence is a declaration of independence.

It’s essential to distinguish between events that are really beyond your control and events you caused yourself.

Whenever you do what you really love, your heart lifts, your mind opens, and everything changes. You wake up. That’s what true adventure really is.

What you love is as unique to you as your fingerprints. You need to know that because nothing will make you really happy but doing what you love.

In the days before automobiles, people in horse-drawn wagons used to sleep if they were tired. They didn’t worry about getting lost, because the horse knew the way home. Your heart knows the way to your gifts. You can trust it to take you to them.

I believe you can have whatever you really want in this life, in one form or another, sooner or later. All you have to do is take care of your health and be lucky enough to live for a while. But you can’t have it all at once and you can’t have it forever. No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day.

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

A goal is the basic unit of life design.

Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music.

Change is not only likely, it’s inevitable.

Find out what you love. Do it because you love it. Stick with it. Start now.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

Everything is grounded in mystery. Everything is swimming, and the stable does not exist.

Failure isn’t in not reaching your goal but in having no goal to reach.

To get ready to climb Everest, I did a lot of hill running with a daypack on and a lot of underwater swimming. I would swim a couple of lengths underwater and then a couple above. It gets your body going with limited oxygen.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you’re in the process, you’re there.

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn’t yet found a rock to stand on.

The secret island had looked mysterious enough on the night they had seen it before – but now, swimming in the hot June haze, it seemed more enchanting than ever.

This life is like a swimming pool. You dive into the water, but you can’t see how deep it is.